The burning rocks seemed to have stopped coming for now, and Jake used the respite to herd his team into the nearly completed vehicles. The power had
gone out, throwing the factory floor into a hazy twilight filled with screams, shouts and running forms. “TODD’S TRAPPED, YOU THREE, PULL HIM OUT OF THERE. RICK, IT JUST NEEDS FUEL, GET SOME DAMN DIESEL AND DRIVE HER OUT.”
The Guardians were roaring to life and starting to move, knocking equipment aside as they sought any open path out of the chaos. Jake looked around – all of his staff seemed to have gone save a few huddled in a still unfuelled M1117. The smoke was already too thick to see the other sections…
The brief respite ended as a fresh wave of flying lava crashed into the plant. Jake fell to his knees, dazed by the impact of a trolley propelled by the blast. His eyes were swimming and his throat burned with the heat and the toxic smoke. He couldn’t see the Guardian… he hadn’t heard it leave, but he couldn’t see it… he struggled to regain his feet but the shaking, cracking floor seemed to defeat his efforts.
A hand gripped his wrist and pulled him up. It was Todd, and Jake had never been so grateful to see the spiky-haired brat. “She’s fueled up boss, let’s go.” Jake was half-dragged, half-clambered through the door of the Guardian. The cabin was filled with injured workers, and someone was already in the driver’s seat, because no sooner was he on board than the engine roared to life and the armored car pulled away. Flames licked at the windows as the vehicle sped through the factory, crashing through the wreckage of jigs and component bins as it made for the doors. Then they were clear, rolling across the huge parking lot, surrounded by a mass of other vehicles trying to escape the destruction. Lava continued to rain down, destroying some of the cars even as they watched, but luck smiled on their Guardian and they were soon out of range.
Jake leaned forward to address the driver. “Get us up to the Davison intersection. The VDF are bound to set up a checkpoint there, we can drop off our wounded and refuel. They’re going to need all the help they can get.”
White House Situation Room, Washington D.C.
“Sir, it’s Detroit. City’s been hit hard, the attack started just a few minutes ago.”
“Let’s hear it John. In a hundred words or less, please.”
“Mr. President, the Baldricks hit Detroit with a lava attack. As far as we can see right now, it’s the same mechanism as Sheffield, but bigger and nastier. We shot down the spotter demon, but the portal still opened. We’ve got something like forty thousand tons of lava a second falling out of the sky a couple of miles north of downtown.” Secretary Warner paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
“The Cadillac plant took a hell of a beating and Wayne State has already become a firestorm. The freeway trenches are channeling the lava; we can’t stop it before it reaches the river. In the next half hour we’re going to lose the Renaissance Center, plus the tunnel and the bridge to Windsor. As for casualties… haven’t got an estimate yet, but worst case is well into six figures.”
“You know, Detroit is the Democrat-voting stronghold of Michigan, if it’s gone, then it might be enough to flip the state into our column.”
There was a stunned silence in the room. Eventually President Bush’s voice cut through the disbelief, pitched low and frighteningly cold. “Karl, shut up, just shut up. John, could you continue please.”
“Personnel at DIMO(N) detected the portal activity at 12:43 Eastern. NORAD was informed immediately of course. We vectored in F-16s from the 127th out of Selfridge, they flew up on full reheat but the local United States Volunteers got to the co-ordinates first. As far we can tell, they sighted a demon of the same type that the Sheffield footage shows, what General Abigor calls a ‘gorgon’. Local citizens already had it under fire when the USV shot it down with triple-A. Unfortunately the damn things seem to be salvage fused.”
Blank faces stared back at him. “It’s a nuclear warfare term, it means… never mind. The point is, shooting down the gorgon seems to cause the portal to open prematurely. We bought some time to evacuate, but not nearly enough to save everyone. Sadly the LDV unit was directly under the portal when it opened; they were killed instantly.”
Bush stopped glaring and his face softened from his barely suppressed anger at the earlier remarks. “They died in the line of duty? That should be recognized, it’ll put the Volunteers on the map as part of our armed forces. Medal of Honor?”
Secretary Warner thought quickly. “I agree with the sentiment, yes Sir. But the Medal is a bit over-doing it. A Silver Star each for the crew would be appropriate I think, and a Presidential Unit Citation for the Third Michigan USV. The situation in Detroit is pure hell, if you’ll forgive the phrase sir. There’s a serious difference between this attack and Sheffield. Over there, the portal remained in one place and poured its lava over the same target. So, although it spread, the starting point was constant and to some extent the damage was self-limiting. The Baldricks have learned their lesson from that Sir, this time the portal is moving, its sort of dancing around at random over a two or three mile area, a bit like a deflating balloon. So the lava’s being spread over a much wider area and the damage is a lot greater.”
“I hope nobody ever thought the Baldricks were stupid, that could be the worst mistake we could make.” A slight surge of amusement went around the room at that point, briefly lightening the somber tone. The President himself had benefited more that once from a presumption of stupidity. “As soon as word of this second attack hits the streets, we’re going to be under pressure to do something. Remember World War Two?”
The reference caused a certain degree of bewilderment in the situation room. Eventually the Army Chief of Staff, General George W. Casey, explained. “Back in World War Two, there was popular demand for anti-aircraft batteries around our cities. So the President ordered 90mm anti-aircraft batteries set up. Unfortunately, those guns were also badly needed as tank-killers in Europe but the Army there never got them due to the AA priority. So a lot of our tank crews died while our cities were never attacked.” Casey settled back, mentally noting that the aide who had slipped him the explanation for the President’s remark had just earned himself a promotion and a choice assignment.
“Can we pull any triple-A back from Hell?” Bush didn’t sound hopeful.
“Not a chance Sir. The Harpies are the most effective weapon Satan has, they’re giving us a lot of trouble. They’re like aircraft but present in infantry numbers and our fighters just can’t shoot them down fast enough. We were lucky first time round, Abigor had only one legion of them, sixty-six hundred. We believe there are at least 33 legions being thrown into the battle to under way. Over 200,000, our troops need every anti-aircraft system they’ve got. We can’t even give them air support properly at the moment, all our planes bar a few, are killing Harpies. If anything we need more triple-A out there not less.
“Anyway, Sir, its pointless. We know now that killing the gorgon path-finder doesn’t do any good, well, not much anyway. Once it’s over a city, that city is gone. It’s like the bad old days before we had the GBIs up in Alaska, once we spotted an inbound missile, we knew the city it was aimed at was gone, it just hadn’t died yet. We can’t defend the cities because by the time the gorgon appears, its too late. We have to pre-empt the attacks at source. Now, there are a few things we can do there, our early warning system based on the cell phone net worked. We need to give DIMO(N) all the resources they can use, that they don’t already have anyway, for early warning. It isn’t much, but it’s the best we can do until we get all our pieces into place. Other than that, all we can do is to mitigate the disaster. I do hope FEMA are going to be a bit more competent this time than they were at New Orleans.”
There was an embarrassed shuffling of feet at that remark. Secretary Dirk Kempthorne took the bait elegantly. “Well, at least we’re arming the victims this time around, not disarming them. I guess the crime rate will be a bit lower.”